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Free Website Content
What is Delicious
Understanding Social Bookmarking
By S. Housley
Delicious is a social bookmarking system,
that is notable, not only for its unusual web address
http://del.icio.us, but
for its unusual approach to content building that is
becoming increasingly popular. In order to ease the
burden of producing consistent stream of fresh content,
publishers are turning to users to build, categorize
and qualify content. While this is said to be part of
the web 2.0 phenomenon, publishers realize the value
of collaboration.
Social bookmarking allows users to qualify
content. With Delicious, each "bookmark" of a specific
webpage is seen as a vote of confidence. The more people
who bookmark a specific webpage, the more credible the
webpage is viewed.
In addition to bookmarking a webpage, users
"tag" the webpage. The tags are simply single word keywords
that relate to the contents of the webpage. The tagging
associates keywords with the webpage's content, making
it easier to categorize and classify the content of
the webpage. If everyone bookmarking a page uses similar
keyword tags, the webpage will be classified as a credible
resource in a specific category.
As a webpage receives more and more bookmarks
from different Delicious users, the listing for the
webpage becomes more prominent in the Delicious listings.
Delicious users can bookmark and tag multiple pages
within a website. Content can be tagged with multiple
terms. As more users tag the content, it becomes easier
to find similar topics.
How to Use Delicious:
1. Create a Delicious Account
In order to create a Delicious account, you will
need to provide a valid e-mail address, login name and
password.
2. Verify an Account
An e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address provided
when the Delicious account was created. You will need
to click the link in the e-mail in order to fully activate
the Delicious account.
3. Login
Login in to the Delicious account in order to begin
bookmarking and tagging content.
4. Post URL
Enter the URL of a webpage or website that you find
to be particularly valuable or useful.
5. Describe & Tag
Enter a descriptive page title and description that
relates to the contents of the bookmarked webpage. In
the final field enter single word keywords that relate
to the webpages content, these will be the "tags".
Why Use Delicious?
Delicious can be used by professionals to share
industry resources that are particularly useful. Delicious
users store their favorite websites or resources online
and other users can easily access bookmarks. Often
websurfers will use Delicious to find resources that
they consider to be relevant and qualified.
Delicious also takes advantage of RSS. RSS
feeds can be used to syndicate user bookmarks or to
aggregate content with the same tags. Generating RSS
feeds allows users to syndicate bookmarks or to aggregate
content that contains related tags. Users can also syndicate
bookmarks that are created by other users using RSS
feeds.
Bookmarks
Many users generate bookmarks that are all related
as in this case of bookmarks all related to RSS:
http://del.icio.us/rssfeeds
or the RSS feed of the same bookmarks at: http://del.icio.us/rss/rssfeeds
Other user bookmarks don't encompass a single
theme as is the case with the following:
http://del.icio.us/oreck
or the RSS feed of the same bookmarks at: http://del.icio.us/rss/oreck
As publishers struggle to create unique
content, they are turning towards web surfers to qualify
and categorize content. As a result social-bookmarking
is becoming more prevalent as users weigh-in.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds
and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for
NotePage http://www.notepage.net
a wireless text messaging software company.
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This article may be used freely in opt-in
publications and websites, provided that the resource
box is included and the links are active. A courtesy
copy of the issue or a link to any online posting would
be greatly appreciated send an email to sharon@notepage.net
.
Additional articles available for publication available
at http://www.small-business-software.net/free-website-content.htm
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